Rescuers on foot, in four-wheel-drive vehicles and from the air scrambled to Buscot Hill, off the Twizel-Omarama Rd, just before 6pm, after the injured man rang emergency services to report his location.
Southern District Command Centre district deployment co-ordinator Senior Sergeant Craig Brown said initial indications were the man had suffered back and leg lacerations.
As police and volunteer firefighters from Omarama and Twizel went to the scene, two helicopters - the Westpac Rescue Helicopter Christchurch and a search and rescue helicopter from Oamaru - were dispatched.
Omarama Chief Fire Officer Howard Williams said the injured man was found 300m west of a cellphone tower - ''down a hill, down a bluff''.
''He jumped off, got caught [by the wind] and slammed back into the rock.''
The man's friends had also contacted emergency services when he failed to land in the designated area.
Due to the terrain, more than a dozen Omarama volunteer firefighters responded with their co-response unit 4WD and an ''old Toyota Hilux that we have hung on to for these sorts of things''.
One crew drove along the cellphone tower track, while the other group followed another high country track, with volunteer firefighters also walking up and down the hill in order to ''meet in the middle'' and locate the man.
It was an hour after the initial call before the first group of rescuers managed to reach the man who was ''in pain . . . but all right''.
Mr Williams said the man was not believed to live locally and was part of a large group hang-gliding and parapunting in the area yesterday.
He was winched from the scene and taken by helicopter to Christchurch Hospital with suspected spinal injuries, a St John spokesman said.
